In the UFL, famed football coaches find ‘a breath of fresh air’

For players, the UFL offers a chance to leap to the NFL or simply remain in the sport as long as they can. What’s the attraction for well-known coaches?

“I love the game of football,” said Birmingham Stallions Coach Skip Holtz, a former coach at Division I programs East Carolina, South Florida and Louisiana Tech. “I love the life lessons that it teaches. It’s hard. It’s demanding. It’s physically hard. It’s mentally hard. But the lesson that it teaches you: Life is hard.”

Phillips, the coach of the San Antonio Brahmas, has been in the profession since 1969 and worked for 10 NFL teams, with six stints as either a full-time or interim head coach. He had been out of the game since 2019, so when the XFL gave him the chance to lead his hometown Houston Roughnecks last year, he was drawn back to a career that doubles as a calling.

“This is what I do. It’s what I love to do,” Phillips said. “They gave me the opportunity to do it. I didn’t have that opportunity in the NFL, and I still wanted to coach. I appreciate them giving me the opportunity.”

At 76, doing what he enjoys most keeps Phillips active. Appeasing loved ones doesn’t hurt either.

“Yeah, my wife wants me out of the house,” Phillips said. “We’ve done it so long, it’s worked out pretty good, 55 years. And I’ve been coaching most of the time. It’s what I love doing, and she knows that. She’s happy for me doing it. Like I say, I’m blessed to have a job at my age.”

That feeling explains why joining a league that might seem like a step down to the outside world feels different to those on the inside.

“I love the game,” said Stoops, who coaches the Arlington Renegades. “… I enjoy the strategies of the game. I enjoy the camaraderie and fellowship of the team and being around a bunch of guys who love the game — coaches and players. So all of that together is what I really enjoy.”

Stoops shocked the football world in 2017 when he retired from the University of Oklahoma. After 18 seasons in Norman, the 2000 BCS national champion and 10-time Big 12 conference winner wanted free time — and free rein over that time. In 2020, he occupied some of the empty space on his calendar by joining the XFL to coach the Dallas Renegades before the league shut down its 2020 season because of the coronavirus pandemic. Stoops stayed on to lead the rebranded Arlington Renegades to the XFL championship last season. When the XFL and USFL merged to form the UFL, he returned for a third season as the Renegades’ coach.

“When I retired at Oklahoma, everyone didn’t believe me initially, but then they realized nothing was wrong,” Stoops said. “Of course, I wasn’t forced out. I just wanted my own time and my own space. And the old saying, be careful what you wish for — you might have a little bit too much of your own time and your own space. And that’s as simple as it is. This fills up a part of the year. You get to do what you love to do, and that’s just coach football, be around a bunch of guys who love to play football, and they’re great guys to be around. And I don’t have an academic meeting to go to when I leave the field. I don’t have a compliance meeting to go to. I don’t have a recruiting meeting to go to. I don’t have to call Johnny’s parents because Johnny won’t go to class. So there you have it. I love football, enjoy players who love the game and love to play and they’re easy to coach. So that puts it all together.”

Holtz, the 2023 USFL coach of the year, has amassed a 29-4 record in spring football, winning the 2022 and 2023 USFL championships. (His Stallions have the UFL’s best record this season and will face the Michigan Panthers in the USFL conference final.) He coached in college for 34 seasons, 22 as a head coach. But when Louisiana Tech fired Holtz in 2021 after nine seasons and seven bowl appearances, he knew he wanted his next role to excite him.

“It has rejuvenated me, revitalized my joy in coaching again working with athletes that are 22 to 30 years old that are trying to reestablish their career or establish their career,” Holtz said “… It’s really been a breath of fresh air. …

“I have enjoyed spring football more than any job I’ve had in coaching. I say that because you have such a captured, committed audience. Everybody’s here for a reason. They’re not just here because they’re getting paid. They’re not just here because they get a scholarship. They’re here because they want to get better. They’re here because they want to elevate their game. They’re like sponges.”

Before he took the job with the Stallions in 2022, Holtz’s wife tried to convince him to retire.

“I’m not done yet,” Holtz said. “I’m not ready to go sit in a boat and fish and play golf and that was my day. I still feel like there’s so much more to life. I’m 60 years old right now, and I don’t feel it.”

All eight UFL teams practice and train in Arlington, Tex., and travel across the country to play games on weekends. They have identical facilities and resources, which the coaches said they appreciate, even if they’re different from what they’re used to.

“There’s nothing to compare to what we have in college,” Stoops said. “This is different. But we have what you need to be successful. I believe it’s been incredibly positive. What we have to work with is really excellent and good and positive and helps the players, helps us as coaches. But you can’t compare.”

“The NFL has a lot more perks, certainly, and the NFL wasn’t going to fold a team that I was coaching [like with the Roughnecks staff and players being let go during the XFL-USFL merger], so that’s a lot there,” Phillips said. “The merger, we’ll see how it works out, but I think it’s working out well. Of course I thought the XFL was going to do well. But long term, I think this league has a better chance.”

The UFL does not disclose salaries. Holtz admitted his doesn’t match what he made coaching in college, but he said he’s paid fairly and that he never got into coaching for the money.

“This gives me the opportunity not to chase a paycheck but to chase a dream,” Holtz said of the UFL.

Phillips said money didn’t factor into his decision to join a spring football league. And for Stoops, the salary justified his investment of time and energy.

“Obviously it was worth it or I wouldn’t have done it,” Stoops said. “… You’re not comparing apples to apples if you want to talk about my salary with OU compared to a start-up spring football league. This is going to do well. It’s going to take off and do great. I know it will. But it’ll grow in time.”

Once averse to coaching in professional football, Holtz said he would listen if anyone from the NFL contacted him. Counting his stint as Northwestern’s special assistant to interim coach David Braun last year, Holtz has coached 34 games in the past 14 months. And he said he turned down a number of college opportunities because he’s enjoying coaching spring football so much.

While winning is important for these coaches, they also said they get rewarded when players catch on in the NFL.

“We help them showcase their abilities and talent where other people will look at them and give them more opportunities, whether it be [the] NFL or otherwise,” Stoops said. “Initially, yeah, you want to be able to win the championship, but it’s much more than anything to give the players a great experience, help them continue to develop and give them a strong platform to show their talent and abilities.”

The D.C. Defenders’ Reggie Barlow, the 2023 XFL coach of the year, said he entered the profession because of the leaders who molded him, from youth football through his eight-year NFL career as a wide receiver and return man. He filled notepads with the lessons he learned from them, about the game and about life. Like Stoops, Barlow wants to develop his pupils into NFL players but he also wants to guide their transition to lives after football.

“Those are the things that feed my soul,” Barlow said. “That’s the reason why I do this. The two most important days in life are the day that we’re born and the day we realize why. And then I believe the man above put me here to be a server in this capacity. So I’m here to serve.”